Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez is a legendary name to those who grew up Californian. He’s our MLK, our Gandhi, our Ace Ventura. Problem is, if you’re like me, Cesar is one of those guys like Che Guevara or Idi Amin — i.e. of whom the name is very familiar but the deeds are not. I went into Cesar Chavez looking search of information and pride. Can’t say I got much of either.

What I got instead was Michael Peña (Chavez). Given the chance to play a man who once went on a 25-day hunger strike, Michael (from what I could tell) decided to beef up for the role. I can’t say this was a quality choice, hombre. Peña also decided what Chavez did most of the time was contemplate; his Cesar Chavez often mimics statue behavior, looking pensive and staring off into the horizon. Who knows what the real Cesar Chavez was specifically thinking?  The point is he was doing a lot of it.

This is a fairly important biography. Or it should have been, at least. Cesar Chavez brought not only unions, but recognition to immigrant laborers. Hispanics often get ignored in American Civil Rights talks; it’s not like the folks who painted “WHITES ONLY” signs in the 1960s were cool with off-whites. They still aren’t. Hispanic sunup to sundown field pickers made roughly $2 for an entire days’ work. They chose little in the process, often had ugly knee and back problems and even forked over a nickel for every cup of water supplied.  Toil in the field all day just to pay for the water; that’s seriously messed up.  These are not exaggerations and it cannot be emphasized enough that white America was fine with this.  Some of white America is still fine with this.

Enter Cesar Chavez – an educated man with a bent for organization. He realized the power of the collective and the power of boycott, both mostly, he just thought about stuff. He and wife Helen (America Ferrera) had countless children. I say countless because they clearly had more than one, but the film only showed us how his eldest (Eli Vargas) got along with dad. Eventually John Malkovich shows up, which was good because I couldn’t tell up to that point if there was going to be a villain. Get a load of him referring to the immigrants as “children” while implying that giving in to them is akin to “spare the rod and spoil the child.” (I think that moment was lifted straight from the historical annals of Bigotry Illustrated.) Among other things, Papa Malk delivers the most uncomfortable “I’m your friend” bit of strike-breaking in my film memory – speaking Spanish with the accent of a man who has never met a native speaker before, he calls Chavez a liar while offering field workers *gasp* free water!

Cesar Chavez was directed, poorly, by Diego Luna, who managed to capture the intense beige of everything. The cinematography in Chavez is awful, just plain awful. Someone needed to tell Diego there’s a difference between filming ‘poor as dirt’ and actually filming dirt. Then there was the general following of Cesar – hand held, jumpy, blurry, dust covered shots. It’s not like the man was a world class sprinter. I’m pretty sure the cameraman got to a point where he decided as long as Cesar was somewhere in the shot – didn’t have to be centered or in focus – as long as he was in the shot, todo es bueno.

Diego, amigo mio, por favor … you are much better on the other side of the camera. ¿Entiendes?

While I didn’t find this biopic terribly moving, nor 1/10th as powerful as it’s supposed to be, it did inspire messages to both oppositions:

To anti-Unionists in the United States, especially those who go on TV and spout drivel about how welfare recipients are buying steak and champagne: you look like assholes. It doesn’t matter if you’re justified; you look like the landowners who have no problem with treating immigrants as little more than slave labor. What kind of Dickensian America is your dream? Secondly, you’re not justified. Not in anything that involves total elimination of unions. I have no idea what you understand, but this is the truth — nobody creates a for-profit job out of charity. If you give rich people more money expecting unemployment to fall, you are kidding yourself; that’s absurd. Non-government “job creators” create jobs to make more money. Period. That applies no matter how much money you have. American workers understand their efforts are undervalued and take it because nobody actually wants to be communist. But there’s a limit. Ridiculous economic theories such as supply side and trickle-down have proven completely ineffective -just check recent history for proof- at doing anything positive except making rich people temporarily richer. Whatever you’ve been told, American life doesn’t improve with the magical disillusion of unions.

To immigrants looking to expand/enforce your rights as American citizens: when you march somewhere, stop carrying the goddamn Mexican flag. There are very few bigger turn-offs in the United States. Your argument is this – “I’m an American, just like you. We are equal under the law; we deserve equal rights.” Period. Even Americans sympathetic to your cause feel they owe Mexico NOTHING. I understand your heritage is important to you. It is important to most Americans. But when you march as an American claiming American rights on American soil and you carry a Mexican flag, you’re saying, “I deserve this because I’m Mexican. I deserve this because you owe Mexico.” I understand that’s not what you’re actually saying – but that’s exactly what Americans hear when you march with that symbol. We don’t owe Mexico squat. (That point is debatable, but the sentiment is not.) And you’re never going to win an argument about your rights as an American by pointing out first and foremost how American you aren’t and how much you care about a land where don’t live. Think, man, think!

♪I am
I am Cesarman
And I know what’s happening
I am
I am Cesarman
And I can eat anything

You don’t really want to accept the scraps that they’ve been feeding you
I’m gonna stroll around and think, cuz, hombre, that’s just what I do♫

Rated PG-13, 101 Minutes
D: Diego Luna
W: Keir Pearson
Genre: Gandhi-rama
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: La gente
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: EL MAN

♪ Parody inspired by “Superman”